How Total Synergy simplifies project setup and delivery

Tech Tip: Kick off your IT project with a "minimum viable roadmap." Agree on deliverables for the first 30 days, so stakeholders are able to see progress fast and refine the scope early on. Do you need expert guidance for your next project? Let’s map it together at https://bit.ly/3ZreddS

PM Pain Point: How to beat decision latency (the 20-minute fix) Decision OS: For every critical item, capture Owner, Options, Impact, Deadline on a single line. No doc? No decision. 48-hour SLA: Publish it. If the owner doesn’t decide by T+48, you escalate automatically. Scope Gate: Any “quick tweak” must show impact to timeline/cost/risk before entering the plan. Daily 10 @ 10: A ten-minute standup strictly for decisions needed today (not status theater). Asynchronous by default: Loom + a one-pager beats herding calendars. Executive “approve/decline” happens in the ticket. Result: Fewer meetings, faster UAT burndown, and a go-live that’s gloriously boring (the good kind). What’s the last decision that sat too long in your program—and what did it cost? Drop it below. I’ll share a one-page Decision OS template you can use tomorrow Joe

Why is consistency important? not bureaucracy, consistency. The importance of a clean customer-facing release track procedure : - (the most important) communication tone and stakeholder tailored management (you don't manage the release program, you also manage the customer of the release) - release system transparency- what is major update, where is the impact, what is elected to be part of scope -structured and clean information formatting to see the light ahead including in "times of despair" inherent to all live products

Speed without chaos needs constraints. Here is the framework that works. One owner manages decisions and tradeoffs. One sprint keeps work inside a thin slice. One metric directs effort and debate. Scope creep gets parked, not shipped. Timeboxes prevent endless debates. The cadence is simple and strict. Auth and foundation land by Day 3. Core flow reaches staging by Day 7. Payments and analytics follow by Day 10. Hardening happens through Day 12. Docs and deploy finish on Day 13. Day 14 is demo and transfer.

Every time I hear a project is "99% done", I get nervous because the last 1% usually takes longer than the first 99%. That last 1% is where you discover everything you didn't know you didn't know. Where simple tasks reveal infinite complexity. Where "quick fixes" become complete rewrites. The first 99% is building what you think should happen. The last 1% is discovering what the universe thinks. 99% done until deployment works locally but not in production. 😅

Working on few projects with a tendency to start new initiatives with a Proof of Concept (PoC) before fully committing, the life cycle flow of these projects looks like the below:

𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲 𝟱: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 They can’t resist changing the game. “Just one more tweak.” “Let’s slip this in while you’re at it.” “It won’t take long...” The Scope Shapeshifter makes every change sound harmless until deadlines vanish, budgets explode, and the team burns out. 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲: Disguising major scope changes as “quick wins.” 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗳𝗶𝘅: Lock scope with ruthless clarity. Track every change request, highlight trade-offs, and force decision-makers to own the impact. Ever seen a project morph into three different projects without anyone admitting it?

Have you ever left a meeting thinking 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝙗𝙤𝙖𝙧𝙙, only to have 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙣 𝙪𝙣𝙧𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙡 when one stakeholder reverses course afterward? Here’s a technique to surface 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙝𝙞𝙙𝙙𝙚𝙣 𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨: Ask each participant to write out the follow-on implications of a proposal as an “if…then” statement. For example: “If we add this item to the roadmap, then we’ll need to drop something else.” Gather the “thens” and look for points where #stakeholders disagree. Those are the areas that need more discussion and resolution. Melissa Appel and Bruce McCarthy have more techniques in 𝘼𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙚𝙙: 𝙎𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩 𝙇𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨. #productmanagement https://amzn.to/41O71KY

I was with a client yesterday for a sprint planning session. Here are the tips I shared: * Start with a simple Sprint Goal. * Capacity first, scope second — include a 10–20% buffer for interrupts. * Do a short pre-planning (PO/BA + one senior dev) so sprint planning isn’t discovery. * If new work appears mid-sprint, trade something out (net-neutral), or it waits. Definition of Ready (DoR): * Clear user value + acceptance criteria * Dependencies known (designs/APIs/data) * Small enough & estimated * Test approach noted Definition of Done (DoD): * Code + tests merged & reviewed * Deployed to the agreed env * AC met with evidence * Demoable (and noted in release/change log) Curious: what’s the one DoR or DoD rule you refuse to compromise on?

Green 'RAG'. Red Reality?  Delivery dashboards glow green. But when escalation remains inactive and commentary contradicts the metrics, what are you truly monitoring? In project reviews, silence isn't stability. It's drifting. This carousel highlights the illusion, the unravelling, and the diagnostic gap. Because if your systems reward optics over insight, you're not managing delivery, you're managing perception. Swipe through. Then ask: Where's the red hiding in your green?